Exciting, humbling, and terrifying - these emotions capture what it is like to teach your first yoga class. But it must be done. You did not get your teaching training certificate for nothing!

Follow the tips below and find inspiration on how to conduct a great class for your students anywhere in the world. Remember that you will grow as a teacher the more you practice it. Overcome your anxieties and just do it! Here are the first 15 tips to guide your way:

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1. Prepare for every class. Take time to think about the class. Get ready. Arrive early. Set the music. Relax. Focus on the students instead of worrying about mistakes that you might or might not make.

2. Let mistakes slide. If a class ends up not being perfect, it is okay. If you miss something or cue a posture incorrectly, just keep moving forward!

3. Interact with students. Talk to your students before the class. Take the time to establish rapport. Everyone benefits more from the session if there is no negative energy.

4. Balance teaching with other activities.

5. Be fully responsible for your teaching. Spend time growing your practice every day to build your self-confidence. Stay grounded and share your gifts with your students.

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6. Ease the mind. Focus is important in cultivating mindfulness. Guide students in steadying their minds. Help them find an anchor or one thing to focus on to keep distractions at bay. This can be their breath, the body, or a word or phrase.

7. Help students stay grounded. Call the attention of students to certain sensations so they remain grounded. Throughout the class, ask questions that help them cultivate mindfulness from the ground up. Ask them if they feel their feet or the weight of their hips or how their sensations adjust after certain poses.

8. Include breath practice. Teach students effective breathing exercises. Good breathwork has tons of benefits including the treatment of anxiety, depression, and trauma.

9. Include a restful savasana. Some students find it hard to settle down in savasana so guide them. Encourage them to do what feels comfortable them. Offer choices: lie down, sit up, lift their legs, open the eyes, close the eyes - whatever feels right for them.

10. Remind them that yoga is more than doing the asanas. The physical postures have immense benefits to the body but there is a lot more to yoga, like meditation and breath practice, that cultivate the mind and spirituality, which allow students to become better people.

How to sequence a great yoga class

11. Include various groups of poses. Focus on equal parts strength, flexibility, and balance. Move the spine in all directions. The basic template for a balance sequence includes a warm-up, standing poses, inversions, backbends, twists, forward folds, closing postures, and savasana.

12. Select a peak pose. Consider what needs to be warmed up and opened in order for students to reach the peak pose. Introduce them to a variety of poses and show them how to get to the peak pose so they experience success at the apex of class.

13. Focus on a particular body part. Do yoga for the back, hips, shoulders, or hamstrings. Students will feel the difference after the class! Remember to regularly rotate the anatomical focus.

14. Select a teaching point. Pick key actions to focus on each class. This determines what poses should go into your session, as well as a creative method of delivery and use of props.

15. Sequence the class around a Bhavana. Pick a feeling or a theme and incorporate poses that encourage that feeling, attitude, or lesson. For example, if your lesson is on strength, include Warrior poses; if it is gratitude, include heart-opening poses.

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